The invention relates generally to the field of wire feeders and/or welding systems. More specifically, the invention relates to a welding wire feeder with a lockout mechanism.
In certain applications, a welding wire feeder may be used to feed a welding wire through a torch to a weld location in front of the tip of the torch. In many applications, it may be desirable to move the wire feeder to a remote location or simply to a different location in a work area. Otherwise, the wire feeder may be required to drive the wire over an unnecessarily long run of conduit to the particular work location. As a result, the wire feeder may require a more robust and expensive drive mechanism. Since many conventional wire feeders are designed as stationary devices intended to remain within a particular work area, some “suitcase” wire feeders have been developed, are currently available, and are specifically designed to enable a user to carry the wire feeders to the desired location.
Such wire feeders are often operable with a variety of types of consumables, and any welding operator may generally operate any given wire feeder as desired. It is possible that a welding operator may not properly identify which consumables and processes are appropriate for use with which welding systems, thereby creating welding problems. Accordingly, there exists a need for wire feeders capable of overcoming such drawbacks with traditional systems.